The Ghost and Jacob Moorhead (12 page)

He stared at her for a long moment, his expression blank. “You are tired. When you’ve finished dining, you will be shown the way to your room. I will talk to you again in the morning.” He rose, bowed ever-so slightly, and stalked through the hastily opened door.

Melissa slumped, staring after him. When the footman, hesitantly, came to her side and offered the sweet course, she hid her embarrassment that the servant had overheard them by turning her gaze onto the tray. The various tarts, tiny fairy cakes and other sweets turned her stomach. Sweets lover that she was, she still could not face a single bite. She shook her head and the tray was withdrawn. Melissa didn’t move for a long moment. Then she reached for her wine, took a sip—or tried to—found the glass empty and held it up to be filled.

It was more than an hour later when, with help, she wove her way to the bedroom in which she was to sleep.

Chapter Nine

They had attended services that morning but that was the last Melissa had seen of Lester. Now she glanced hopefully at the salon door when, after a brief knock, it opened. She was disappointed. “Well?” she asked the servant.

The footman bowed. “My master requests the pleasure of your company in the library, Mrs. Rumford. I will show you the way.”

Melissa, her heart beating faster, rose to her feet. One hand went to her hair, the other to straighten her skirts. She wondered if she should demand she be taken to her room to freshen up before going to Lester… But then, remembering his barely suppressed anger, his disinclination to believe her, she felt herself slump with dejection. Her pride rose and she straightened. “I am ready.”

The footman bowed again and turned, holding the door for her. She departed from the comfortable salon and waited for the door to close and the footman to step out in the right direction. The house was not overly large but well laid out. She suspected she knew the way even though she’d never before been there. Still, docilely, she followed.

“Good morning,” she said with a smile upon entering the library. The smile faded as she looked around and saw that Lester was not before her. She stood still for a moment and then started for a chair near the fireplace—but halfway there, shifted direction and headed toward the windows looking out over the gardens at the side of the house. They were
not
well laid out and, for a long moment, she made plans for changes that would improve them…and then told herself she was a fool for dreaming. Lester would not forgive her. He would not, once again, ask her to wed him.

And why should he? She was…what she was. The new Lord Everston had called her a whore. The name wasn’t exactly accurate. She didn’t take money from the men who shared her bed. But she hadn’t exactly taken them there for the love of them either. She sighed. Perhaps she should have accepted her fate, should have played the role of proper wife to the mean creature to whom she’d been married out of hand.

Melissa’s mouth drooped, a sadness coming into her eyes.
Life
, she thought,
is not worth the bother
. The door opened and she turned, expectant, hopeful, wondering…

“Your carriage, such as it is, has been pulled into the nearest carriage maker,” said Lester. “Being Sunday, I don’t expect it to be repaired today. Is your journey north desperate? Should I supply you with transport so you may go on your way immediately?”

“My journey is not…desperate,” said Melissa, thinking quickly. “There is no rush for me to reach my…destination…immediately.”

“High Moor Hall,” he said, nodding. “I understand it has been left to Jacob Moorhead. You are joining your lover there?” he asked, swinging his quizzing glass from the end of its ribbon.

“My former lover…” She hung her head. “He said goodbye when he went north.”

“You appear to have little luck with the men you choose, Melissa.”

She turned away. “I have little luck. Period. End of sentence.”

He laughed a sour laugh. “We are alike in that respect. I wonder how we are otherwise alike.”

She turned back, a faint frown creasing her brow. “Alike?”

“You and I. Once I thought we were soul mates. I was disillusioned in that belief of course. You’d have found some way of coming to me if we’d been so well matched as I’d thought.”

“I told you—”

“Yes. And young girls are not raised to know they have a choice when it comes to wedding a man they cannot like. I have remembered that in the long reaches of the night while I studied your story from one end to the other, over and over, and wondered how much of it was true.”

“He was a monster, Lester. You do not know…” She bit her lip and turned away.

“I suspect I do know,” he said gently. “I had him investigated. After I returned from India I retired here to the estate my godfather left me, but I learned what sort of slavery you were sold into. It is only recently I have occasionally ventured into society and only recently I’ve learned of how you…rebelled?”

She nodded, accepting the word.

“Rebelled against what he’d demanded of you. Not the best choice you could have made perhaps, but very likely the only one an innocent thrown into London society with no one to guide her could manage.”

“You do understand?” She cast him a hopeful look.

He laughed that sour laugh again. “Understanding doesn’t mean I approve, Melissa. Or that I accept. But I can, perhaps, play the gentleman while you are here and pretend you are a guest I’ve chosen to entertain.”

She turned on her heel and stared out the window.

He watched her rigid spine, watched it gradually relax, but perhaps a bit too much, and then saw her stiffen it back into proper posture. With mixed emotions, he watched her turn to face him.

“Then it behooves me to act like the guest you would have chosen to entertain, does it not?” she asked, her smile falsely bright. “Tell me, what is there in this benighted part of the world that one might find worthy of a visit? Ruins? A particularly fine view? Perhaps a village not totally unworthy of one’s time?” She stepped nearer. “Or would you play cards? Chess? Billiards? Or we might ride? I haven’t ridden for a long time now, but I don’t believe it is something one forgets.”

His smile hardened. “You have not mentioned
one
thing we might do…”

His suggestive tone wiped all expression from her face. “No. I did not, did I?” she asked, not pretending to misunderstand him. “There is
that
too, if that is what you want,” she said tonelessly, her gaze off somewhere to the side of him.

He chuckled. “You would be the perfect guest, I see, falling in with your host’s wishes in all things. Well, it is a fine day and I think your suggestion we ride would please us both. We can combine our ride with visiting the nearby ruins of an ancient castle. There isn’t much left but it is on higher ground with a lovely view. I am told it is an excellent site for a picnic so I will have saddlebags packed. You did, I assume, pack a habit?”

“It is old but I do not think I have changed shape to the point it will not fit.” She turned toward the door. “At what time would you care to leave?” she asked and, when those details were settled, she exited, hesitated only a moment and then went directly to her room where she found a maid had not only laid out her old dark green habit but had sponged and pressed it. It looked better than she expected!

Her eyes widened. He had
expected
her to agree to his plan! But what if he did? She walked to her window, her mind running ‘round and ‘round the things he had said to her. The insults. The understanding. The mixed cues she’d received from him. What did it all mean?

She sighed. What, after all, could it mean? He and she had changed so much, she feared that there could no longer be a meeting of minds as there once had been.

Oh, but if only there could be…if only one could go back…

* * * * *

The next day, Melissa turned her head and watched Lester as he passed the coach. When it was discovered that far more than a broken axle must be repaired and the driver would not agree to the work until the owner agreed to the cost, it was decided that Lester would escort her to High Moor, where, she hoped, he might stay for a few days. She’d not told him
why
she must go there and, at this point, she wasn’t at all certain she’d keep to her original intention to lure Jacob away. All the tearing young emotions of her first love had been roused by the ride and picnic she’d shared yesterday with Lester. All the longings and hopes and fears…

She looked out the other side of the carriage and, blurred by the distance, saw the towers of York Minster. Their route, it seemed, meandered a trifle farther north than she’d have thought necessary from what she remembered of the map she’d bought. But then the carriage slowed, so perhaps it was time to turn west? She hoped so. Lester had refused to ride with her, saying he preferred horseback to jouncing along in a carriage, so, as usual, she was alone…and lonely.

Melissa’s gaze settled, blindly, on the cushions across from her. She knew people who didn’t seem to mind being alone but had never understood it. She had never liked it, was always conscious of irritation and impatience and a need for distraction. She’d had far too much solitude since her aged husband took to his bed for the last weeks of his life. His death, she’d assumed, would result in some company, courtesy visits if nothing else…but it had not.

Melissa wondered how people bore it. Very much more and she’d have gone running through the streets shrieking. That, even more than her financial difficulties, had weighed in the balance when she made her decision to go north. Even if Jacob could not be lured back into her net, she’d not be
alone
.

Lester rode past the carriage and Melissa’s thoughts returned to him.
He
’
s changed
, she thought.
There is a cynicism
.
And that subtle nastiness so often phrased in the form of a compliment
,
which one only belatedly realizes is an insult
. She sighed. When she’d first seen him descending from the carriage in which he’d ridden to her rescue, her heart had given such a lurch.

And then his tone when he saw it was me
.
He hates me
…

Melissa stared at Lester’s back.
If only we could go back
,
could return to what was
,
could pretend the years between didn
’
t happen
. But they had and there was no pretending otherwise.

Lester was lost to her.

Jacob
, she scolded herself.
I must concentrate on Jacob
.

* * * * *

Listening to the new housekeeper, Mrs. Brownley, snoring contentedly with her head against the cushioned coach slabs, Verity eyed the countryside with something approaching distaste. “It is so boring,” she said when Mary asked about her expression.

“Boring?” Mary thought about it. “I suppose someone not raised here cannot see the subtleties that make it one of the more beautiful places in the world.”

“The Alps…”

“Oh yes. But they too can be boring.” Mary lifted her hand and raised and lowered it. “Up and down. Up and down. So very tiring.”

Verity chuckled. “Yes, but it is the
lack
of ups and downs I’m complaining about here. I think we need to agree to disagr—” Her words broke off abruptly as a gunshot sounded. Then another.

Mrs. Brownley’s eyes popped open and she shrieked. Mary grabbed Verity behind her neck, pushed her down between the seats, falling down on top of her. A third gunshot and the carriage pulled to a stop.

Verity felt Mary scrabbling for something, heard her say “thank you”, felt a cool draft as the door was pulled open…and still another shot, this one very close, very loud. She heard Rube swear, felt Mary push up and, almost in her face, a gun went off.

Mary rose to her feet and after one look at Rube also began to swear. Verity rather admired her fluency, recognized four languages, guessed at two more and suspected there were unknowns of which she’d never even heard. She watched Mary pull out a hidden drawer fitted into the squabs and, without thinking, accepted the pistol handed to her.

“Do stop screeching,” Mary told the terrified housekeeper, who stared blankly and then fainted into the cushions. She turned to Verity, saying, “I have to stop that bleeding. You watch.
And don
’
t hesitate to shoot
.”

As she spoke, she was pulling off a petticoat and folding it into a pad that she pushed against the blood. “Don’t you pass out on me, Rube,” she said.

Verity heard words in a language she didn’t understand.

“Now’s a nice time to be telling me that,” groused Mary. “Just be still now.”

More words…

“No, you are not done for. Shut up and behave. Verity, what’s happening?”

“I think I heard a horse galloping toward us from ahead of us.”

“Rescue? We’ll hope.” Mary didn’t cease pressing hard on the pad she’d pushed under Rube’s jacket and against his shoulder. “Actually, we must have been rescued. No one else has shown up at the door.”

“Don’t shoot!”

Verity collapsed back against the squabs, the pistol, held in both hands, lowered so that it pointed at the floor.

“Ah,” said Mary. “It is you, Jacob. Excellent timing. Now if you could just get us home… Who is that?” Mary, never ceasing to press against the wound, twisted around and stared out the rear window.

Still another horse pulled up and the rider dropped to the ground, pointing a pistol at Jacob. “Back off,” he ordered.

Jacob, shaking his head, raised his hands.

Never looking up from where she continued to apply pressure to Rube’s shoulder, Mary yelled, “Jacob is a friend.”

Hesitantly, the stranger lowered his gun. “What has happened here?”

“I’ve yet to discover,” said Jacob, prodding the dead man lying at his feet. “I rode out to meet my cousins and found them fighting off a handful of attackers. I yelled and the bastards disappeared.” He gestured at the plantation a neighbor had started years earlier, evergreens standing tall beside the road for a fair stretch. The undergrowth was sparse but the heavy load of needles above made the interior dim. “They chose the only place along this road where they could disappear expeditiously if things went awry.”